Women in Antarctic Research

The presence and impact of female Antarctic researchers has increased rapidly. In the 1950s most countries did not allow women to work in Antarctica and there were few female Antarctic scientists. Today females are playing leading and influential roles in Antarctic research. For example the Alfred Wegener Institute and the British Antarctic Survey are both led by women and women have led several high impact papers on Antarctic science over the last ten years [eg references 1‐4 at the foot of the page]. With 55% of APECS (Association of Polar Early Career Scientists) members being female, it is time to promote and celebrate the achievements of female Antarctic scientists within the SCAR community in order to increase the visibility of these leading and influential role models for our younger female researchers and to stimulate girls around the world to pursue science careers.

Panel Discussion at POLAR 2018From Entering the Field to Taking the Helm, Women's Perspectives on Polar Research

This lunch panel discussion, with complimentary bag lunch, will explore the accomplishments, challenges, quality of work experiences, insights, recommendations, and prospects for women in polar research.

Dr Chandy Nath, Executive Director of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), will be among the panel speakers.

Celebration of Women in Antarctic Research

This event was a celebration of female Antarctic researchers and aimed to raise their profile to help provide more visible female role models for early career scientists. The event consisted of a 'Wikibomb' where more than 100 wikipedia biographies of Antarctic women were launched. A few short speeches and refreshments were provided thanks to our sponors and many members of the community that donated through our GoFundMe Campaign.

Special thanks to the supporters of our Wikibomb celebration event

Background: The Representation of Women on Wikipedia

The editor community on Wikipedia suffers from the same gender biases as the STEM community at large. The percentage of female editors on Wikipedia is around 16% (up from 8.5% in 2011, but quite obviously nowhere near 50%).

Over the last 5 years there has been a push to ensure that notable women are portrayed on Wikipedia, and women now make up ~35% of biographies (of people who are notable for achievements pre 1950) . However, the quality of those articles is still far lower than for men, with significant shortcomings in their length, content, connectivity to other pages and prominence on the site's front page. This is because achieving a number of articles is an easily visible and achieved target. Ensure high quality of articles is the real long-term goal.

The approach of the Wikimedia foundation and editor community is to simultaneously improve recruitment of female editors and to focus editor efforts towards notable women.

Women Nominated

We have been thrilled with the the fantastic response of the SCAR community to our efforts to promote Women in Antarctic Research. To date we have received over 150 nominations and our team of volunteers is diligently working the research and writing biographies. This will be an ongoing process, with 70 new biographies already accepted onto the encyclopaedia! You can see the progress we've already made here: